[Wikipedia-l] Feature request

Mon Sep 23 04:17:05 UTC 2002

Sorry if this is already in the hopper or (!) has already been done, but
it seems long overdue:

We need a way to compile, based on lists of links (I guess), "Recent
Changes" lists for all articles about a general topic.  I think this is
actually a very pressing need that should have been taken care of long
ago.  (For the record, I asked for it probably a year ago or more.)  The
idea is that we'd be able to maintain lists of all articles on a given
general subject, such as philosophy, and any changes made to any articles
on the subject would show up on the recent changes page for that subject.

Why do we need this?  At least one reason is it might help attract experts
to the project.  Just speaking for myself, I'm sure I'd spend more time on
Wikipedia if there were a philosophy recent changes page.  More
importantly, the recent changes page has *always* been huge.  It's now
more cumbersome than ever and makes it hard for people to focus their
attention, which would be a nice option.  Lack of the feature also makes
it hard to *monitor* goings-on in a general subject area.

With the relatively new mysql-driven software, this shouldn't be as
difficult as it might have been before.  One could compile personal lists
using the "watch this page" feature; what I suggest is that we have
publicly-editable and publicly-viewable lists of the same nature.

(Minor point: in a list of recent changes pages, I think there should be
automatically listed the number of topics that are listed under a given
subject.  That'd give us an idea of how much more work there is to be done
in adding to the list.)

I am not committed to any particular version of the feature, by the way.
I'd just like to see it done.  I don't want to have to wade through 5000
edits just to see all the recent philosophy edits.

Larry